Use a maintenance model that ensures plant reliability

Reliability concepts pioneered by the aviation industry more than 40 years ago have proven to be effective in various industries but generally require plants to follow linear progression models. These models outline stages of reliability, as well as the prerequisites required to progress to the next stage. Most plants today begin in a preventive stage before progressing to predictive and reliability-centered stages. Each stage builds upon the stages before it, resulting in increased plant availability at an overall lower fixed cost.

While traditional models of reliability show improvement over several decades, many businesses and plants are now invested in executing an accelerated progression model. This model sees plants move from a current state of preventive maintenance to a state of reliability-centered maintenance in several years rather than decades, by focusing on effective strategies before efficient execution.

This model can be built and implemented effectively through a collaborative effort of internal and external resources. Some companies offer asset management consulting services that enable plants to quickly and efficiently implement an accelerated reliability model in a fraction of the time that a more traditional approach may require.

All reliability-centered maintenance models require plants to complete several reliability processes before any direct benefit can be seen, including:

1.Hierarchy and master data for all existing equipment, including a review and revision of existing BOMs (bills of materials) and P&IDs.

2.Criticality assessment for all existing assets, with an analysis of health and safety, environmental, public impact and operations risks for all major assets.

3.Root-cause failure analysis (RCFA) for all major and repetitive failures.

Of these key processes, only the implementation of effective RCFA solutions and equipment strategies yields direct benefit to the plant. This represents a substantial upfront cost to the site over several years before any return on the investment is realized. The implementation of an accelerated reliability model can greatly decrease this upfront cost and payback period, since strategic reliability investments can yield sustainable reductions in a plant’s fixed operating costs while increasing plant availability.

As opposed to a traditional model, an accelerated reliability model implements the four processes outlined above in a strategically staggered approach. A temporary increase in reliability experts can allow sites to complete the master data and P&ID review with the criticality assessment simultaneously, with one process directly feeding the next. Meanwhile, RCFAs can be completed on recent or major failures, with the solutions helping to yield immediate benefit to the site and fund the investment in reliability.

Equipment strategies can then be developed and implemented efficiently by focusing on template strategies and “building block” component models. Template strategies are developed for and applied to entire equipment classes on-site. This strategy can increase the implementation rate of equipment strategies from only a few per year to several per week. Building block models allow the site to build complex strategies with a limited amount of time and resources by developing comprehensive models for simple pieces of equipment. More complex systems are then modeled by combining these standardized building blocks with minimal modification.

This approach to accelerated reliability is self-funding in a time frame that is acceptable to senior management and can be implemented with limited skilled resources. This accelerated reliability model often requires the implementation of new and robust processes that will challenge the existing organization and require project managers with substantial expertise in both reliability and change management. Many times, such expertise is only available through the use of specialty consulting firms, which can develop, implement and transition a successful reliability improvement program.